


Investing

by Tiriel



Category: The Wire
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiriel/pseuds/Tiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Randy Wagstaff's life in season 5 and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Investing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Northland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/gifts).



"Investing in [children] is not a national luxury or a national choice. It's a national necessity."  
-Marian Wright Edelman

* * *

Randy started going to the gym right after he moved into the group home. He remembered Michael and the other guys talking about it, and he knew that Mr. Dennis wouldn't put up with the other boys getting after him over the whole snitching thing. Mr. Dennis tried to talk to him sometimes, but Randy mostly let it go in one ear and out the other. He didn't spar, he just used the weights, hit the bag, and went back to the group home by dinnertime to eat, do his homework, and sleep. He kept his head down. He steered clear of teachers, principals, cops, even ducked the social workers as much as he could. Anyone he might be accused of snitching to. He knew that snitches don't get stitches like some people said, what snitches get is the closest thing they ever had to a home burned down. Snitches get other people hurt. Or dead. 

He used as few words as possible when talking to any grownup. He put on some muscle thanks to his time at the gym, got taller, and watched younger kids, kids who had more years left in the system, get moved out to foster care while he and the other older boys stayed put. Some of them vanished into the corners, others aged out and went wherever people go when they turn eighteen. Randy thought most of them probably wound up on the corners, too. Once some time had passed, he started taking a bus to a library in another part of town a couple of days a week when he wasn't at the gym. They had internet, and nobody knew him there. He started reading up on the stock market, real estate, all the ways there were to make money that didn't involve the corner. Some of those banker types sounded as crooked as any kingpin, but at least nobody was getting shot on Wall Street.

Miss Anna died. She'd never really recovered from the fire. She'd summoned him to see her a few times, told him to be good, remember the things she'd taught him, use his "beautiful, creative mind" to do good in the world. Told him it wasn't his fault, which was the only time he'd ever seen her lie to him. He knew better. He didn't go to the funeral.

Two days before Randy's eighteenth birthday he got a visit from a lawyer, a tall, thin man who seemed a little like a cop but wore a much nicer suit than any detective Randy had ever seen. Mr. Daniels told Randy that Miss Anna had left him a bequest, a college fund. He got an account number and a brochure for a local school's certificate program in "small business management and entrepreneurship." He didn't know how she'd done it, with all her medical expenses, but he couldn't let her down. On his 18th birthday, he took his small bag of clothes and a couple of books he'd kept hidden away and left the group home for good. 

Randy worked, studied, and saved or invested every penny he could. He tried to remember how to be respectful and kind, all the things Miss Anna had taught him that would have gotten him nowhere in the group home. Some days that was easier than others. One day, in the library, he helped a girl who was struggling to carry a big stack of books back to her study desk. "I always get too many books," she said. He didn't think she was all that pretty until she smiled at him, and he realized he was wrong. Tanya was studying to be an English teacher, and when she asked if she could do anything in return for his help, he said, "There is this essay I'm working on..."

He wrote nothing but the truth, about how many years he'd spent in a group home, how he wanted to honor the memory of his foster mother who'd died because of an act of violence, how he'd work as hard as he could if they gave him a chance. Tanya helped polish it up. The grant program got him a reduced interest rate on his business loan. His savings made a decent down payment. Randy looked all over the city until he found a corner store in a neighborhood that was away from the drug corners but still not too expensive. The owner was in his late sixties and had pictures posted behind the register of his grandkids, taken someplace sunny with palm trees in the background. It was the eighty-fifth corner store Randy had walked into. His buyout offer was welcomed with open arms. He found that he didn't have to remind himself to be respectful and kind to his customers, or to Tanya, who moved into the apartment above the store with him a few months later. Maybe, Tanya said, once she'd found a regular teaching job, they could apply to be foster parents.

* * *

Every time he rounded up a group of kids for a talk, Ellis Carver saw Randy Wagstaff's face. He ran into Bunny Colvin around town sometimes, saw the wonders he'd worked with Wee-Bey Brice's kid, of all people. It made him think that maybe, just maybe, with a lieutenant's salary he could make it work, could give Randy a real home for a few years. Maybe the shell of cold determination he'd seen Randy close himself up in as they walked into that group home would fall away as quickly as it had appeared. Randy was a decent kid, and could turn into a decent grownup. Miss Anna had done a lot towards that. Maybe he could help, too. But Colvin had already raised kids, already knew what he was doing. 

Carver thought about what it would be like for a kid already branded a snitch to live with a cop, to have to face that down in the streets every day. What it would be like for a kid to look up to him as a role model. And every time he went to pick up the phone, his hand stopped on the receiver before he'd even dialed a number. Instead he just watched and lived with the guilt as best he could. He had a lot of things to feel guilty about, one more wouldn't kill him. 

It was a long time before he finally realized there was something he could do. Something that would leave the credit where it belonged. A deep dip into his rainy-day fund, a call to an old friend, and it was done.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to my editor.


End file.
